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Europe and Japan in Ruins
MAIN IDEA
ECONOMICS World War II cost
millions of human lives and
billions of dollars in damages. It
left Europe and Japan in ruins.
WHY IT MATTERS NOW
The United States survived
World War II undamaged,
allowing it to become a world
leader.
TERMS & NAMES
• Nuremberg
Trials
• demilitarization
• democratization
SETTING THE STAGE After six long years of war, the Allies finally were vic-
torious. However, their victory had been achieved at a very high price. World War
II had caused more death and destruction than any other conflict in history. It left
60 million dead. About one-third of these deaths occurred in one country, the
Soviet Union. Another 50 million people had been uprooted from their homes
and wandered the countryside in search of somewhere to live. Property damage
ran into billions of U.S. dollars.
TAKING NOTES
Comparing and
Contrasting Use a Venn
diagram to compare and
contrast the aftermath of
World War II in Europe
and Japan.
Europe only
both
Japan only
948 Chapter 32
Devastation in Europe
By the end of World War II, Europe lay in ruins. Close to 40 million Europeans
had died, two-thirds of them civilians. Constant bombing and shelling had
reduced hundreds of cities to rubble. The ground war had destroyed much of the
countryside. Displaced persons from many nations were left homeless.
A Harvest of Destruction A few of the great cities of Europe—Paris, Rome,
and Brussels—remained largely undamaged by war. Many, however, had suffered terrible destruction. The Battle of Britain left huge areas of London little
more than blackened ruins. Warsaw, the capital of Poland, was almost completely
destroyed. In 1939, Warsaw had a population of nearly 1.3 million. When Soviet
soldiers entered the city in January 1945, only 153,000 people remained.
Thousands of tons of Allied bombs had demolished 95 percent of the central area
of Berlin. One U.S. officer stationed in the German capital reported, “Wherever
we looked we saw desolation. It was like a city of the dead.”
After the bombings, many civilians stayed where they were and tried to get on
with their lives. Some lived in partially destroyed homes or apartments. Others
huddled in cellars or caves made from rubble. They had no water, no electricity,
and very little food.
A large number of people did not stay where they were. Rather, they took to
the roads. These displaced persons included the survivors of concentration
camps, prisoners of war, and refugees who found themselves in the wrong country when postwar treaties changed national borders. They wandered across
Europe, hoping to find their families or to find a safe place to live.
Simon Weisenthal, a prisoner at Auschwitz, described the search made by
Holocaust survivors:
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Costs of World War II: Allies and Axis
Direct War Costs
Military Killed/Missing
United States
$288.0 billion*
292,131**
Great Britain
$117.0 billion
272,311
France
$111.3 billion
205,707***
USSR
Germany
Japan
Civilians Killed
—
60,595
173,260†
$93.0 billion
13,600,000
$212.3 billion
3,300,000
2,893,000††
$41.3 billion
1,140,429
953,000
* In 1994 dollars.
** An additional 115,187 servicemen died
from non-battle causes.
*** Before surrender to Nazis.
† Includes 65,000 murdered Jews.
†† Includes about 170,000 murdered Jews and
56,000 foreign civilians in Germany.
7, 720,000
SKILLBUILDER: Interpreting Charts
1. Drawing Conclusions Which of the nations listed in the chart
suffered the greatest human costs?
2. Comparing How does U.S. spending on the war compare
with the spending of Germany and Japan?
PRIMARY SOURCE
Across Europe a wild tide of frantic survivors was flowing. . . . Many of them didn’t really
know where to go. . . . And yet the survivors continued their pilgrimage of despair. . . .
“Perhaps someone is still alive. . . .” Someone might tell where to find a wife, a mother,
children, a brother—or whether they were dead. . . . The desire to find one’s people was
stronger than hunger, thirst, fatigue.
SIMON WEISENTHAL, quoted in Never to Forget: The Jews of the Holocaust
Misery Continues After the War The misery in Europe continued for years after
the war. The fighting had ravaged Europe’s countryside, and agriculture had been
completely disrupted. Most able-bodied men had served in the military, and the
women had worked in war production. Few remained to plant the fields. With the
transportation system destroyed, the meager harvests often did not reach the cities.
Thousands died as famine and disease spread through the bombed-out cities. The
first postwar winter brought more suffering as people went without shoes and coats.
Postwar Governments and Politics
Identifying
Problems
Why might it
have been difficult
to find democratic
government leaders
in post-Nazi
Germany?
Despairing Europeans often blamed their leaders for the war and its aftermath.
Once the Germans had lost, some prewar governments—like those in Belgium,
Holland, Denmark, and Norway—returned quickly. In countries like Germany,
Italy, and France, however, a return to the old leadership was not desirable. Hitler’s
Nazi government had brought Germany to ruins. Mussolini had led Italy to
defeat. The Vichy government had collaborated with the Nazis. Much of the old
leadership was in disgrace. Also, in Italy and France, many resistance fighters
were communists.
After the war, the Communist Party promised change, and millions were ready
to listen. In both France and Italy, Communist Party membership skyrocketed. The
communists made huge gains in the first postwar elections. Anxious to speed up a
political takeover, the communists staged a series of violent strikes. Alarmed
French and Italians reacted by voting for anticommunist parties. Communist Party
membership and influence began to decline. And they declined even more as the
economies of France and Italy began to recover.
World War II 949
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A New War Crimes Tribunal
In 1993, the UN established the
International Criminal Tribunal for
the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) to
prosecute war crimes committed in
the Balkan conflicts of the 1990s.
(See Chapter 35.) This was the first
international war crimes court since
those held in Nuremberg and Tokyo
after World War II.
The ICTY issued its first indictment
in 1994 and began trial proceedings
in 1996. By mid-2003, more than 30
defendants had been tried and found
guilty. They received sentences of 5
to 48 years in jail. Another 25 were
on trial or awaiting trial. The most
prominent of these defendants was
Slobadan Milosevic, the former
president of Yugoslavia. He was
charged with 66 counts of genocide,
crimes against humanity, and other
war crimes.
The Nuremberg Trials While nations were struggling to
recover politically and economically, they also tried to deal
with the issue of war crimes. During 1945 and 1946, an
International Military Tribunal representing 23 nations put
Nazi war criminals on trial in Nuremberg, Germany. In the
first of these Nuremberg Trials, 22 Nazi leaders were
charged with waging a war of aggression. They were also
accused of committing “crimes against humanity”—the
murder of 11 million people.
Adolf Hitler, SS chief Heinrich Himmler, and Minister of
Propaganda Joseph Goebbels had committed suicide long
before the trials began. However, Hermann Göring, the
commander of the Luftwaffe; Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s former
deputy; and other high-ranking Nazi leaders remained to
face the charges.
Hess was found guilty and was sentenced to life in
prison. Göring received a death sentence, but cheated the
executioner by committing suicide. Ten other Nazi leaders
were hanged on October 16, 1946. Hans Frank, the “Slayer
of Poles,” was the only convicted Nazi to express remorse:
“A thousand years will pass,” he said, “and still this guilt of
Germany will not have been erased.” The bodies of those
executed were burned at the concentration camp of Dachau
(DAHK•ow). They were cremated in the same ovens that
had burned so many of their victims.
Postwar Japan
The defeat suffered by Japan in World War II left the country in ruins. Two million lives had been lost. The country’s
major cities, including the capital, Tokyo, had been largely
destroyed by bombing raids. The atomic bomb had turned
Hiroshima and Nagasaki into blackened wastelands. The
Allies had stripped Japan of its colonial empire.
Occupied Japan General Douglas MacArthur, who had accepted the Japanese sur-
render, took charge of the U.S. occupation of Japan. MacArthur was determined to
be fair and not to plant the seeds of a future war. Nevertheless, to ensure that peace
would prevail, he began a process of demilitarization, or disbanding the Japanese
armed forces. He achieved this quickly, leaving the Japanese with only a small police
force. MacArthur also began bringing war criminals to trial. Out of 25 surviving
defendants, former Premier Hideki Tojo and six others were condemned to hang.
MacArthur then turned his attention to democratization, the process of creating a government elected by the people. In February 1946, he and his American
political advisers drew up a new constitution. It changed the empire into a constitutional monarchy like that of Great Britain. The Japanese accepted the constitution. It went into effect on May 3, 1947.
MacArthur was not told to revive the Japanese economy. However, he was
instructed to broaden land ownership and increase the participation of workers and
farmers in the new democracy. To this end, MacArthur put forward a plan that required
absentee landlords with huge estates to sell land to the government. The government
then sold the land to tenant farmers at reasonable prices. Other reforms pushed by
MacArthur gave workers the right to create independent labor unions.
950 Chapter 32
Making
Inferences
How would
demilitarization and
a revived economy
help Japan achieve
democracy?
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Occupation Brings Deep Changes
The new constitution was the most important achievement of
the occupation. It brought deep changes to Japanese society.
A long Japanese tradition had viewed the emperor as divine.
He was also an absolute ruler whose will was law. The
emperor now had to declare that he was not divine. That
admission was as shocking to the Japanese as defeat. His
power was also dramatically reduced. Like the ruler of Great
Britain, the emperor became largely a figurehead—a symbol
of Japan.
The new constitution guaranteed that real political power
in Japan rested with the people. The people elected a twohouse parliament, called the Diet. All citizens over the age of
20, including women, had the right to vote. The government
was led by a prime minister chosen by a majority of the Diet.
A constitutional bill of rights protected basic freedoms. One
more key provision of the constitution—Article 9—stated
that the Japanese could no longer make war. They could fight
only if attacked.
In September 1951, the United States and 47 other nations
signed a formal peace treaty with Japan. The treaty officially ended the war. Some
six months later, the U.S. occupation of Japan was over. However, with no armed
forces, the Japanese agreed to a continuing U.S. military presence to protect their
country. The United States and Japan, once bitter enemies, were now allies.
In the postwar world, enemies not only became allies. Sometimes, allies became
enemies. World War II had changed the political landscape of Europe. The Soviet
Union and the United States emerged from the war as the world’s two major powers. They also ended the war as allies. However, it soon became clear that their
postwar goals were very different. This difference stirred up conflicts that would
shape the modern world for decades.
Analyzing Causes
Why did the
Americans choose
the British system
of government for
the Japanese,
instead of the
American system?
SECTION
5
▲ Emperor Hirohito
and U.S. General
Douglas MacArthur
look distant and
uncomfortable as
they pose here.
ASSESSMENT
TERMS & NAMES 1. For each term or name, write a sentence explaining its significance.
• Nuremberg Trials
• demilitarization
• democratization
USING YOUR NOTES
MAIN IDEAS
CRITICAL THINKING & WRITING
2. How did the aftermath of the
3. Why did so many Europeans
6. ANALYZING CAUSES Why do you think that many
war in Europe differ from the
aftermath of the war in Japan?
take to the roads and wander
the countryside after the war?
4. How did the Allies deal with
Europe only
both
Japan only
the issue of war crimes in
Europe?
5. What three programs did
General Douglas MacArthur
introduce during the U.S.
occupation of Japan?
Europeans favored communism after World War II?
7. FORMING AND SUPPORTING OPINIONS Do you think it
was right for the Allies to try only Nazi and Japanese
leaders for war crimes? Why or why not?
8. MAKING INFERENCES Why was demilitarization such an
important part of the postwar program for Japan?
9. WRITING ACTIVITY ECONOMICS In the role of an observer
for the United States government, write a report on the
economic situation in Europe after World War II. Illustrate
your report with appropriate charts and graphs.
CONNECT TO TODAY CREATING A RADIO NEWS REPORT
Conduct research on a recent trial at the International War Crimes Tribunal in
The Hague. Use your findings to create a two-minute radio news report on the trial.
World War II 951